Two months after being accused of using steroids, Roger Clemens faces off against his accuser at a hearing Wednesday with his reputation at stake and law enforcement authorities ready to pounce if either is found to be lying.
The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform could recommend sometime after Wednesday’s highly anticipated hearing that the Justice Department open a perjury investigation focused on Clemens or trainer Brian McNamee. McNamee says he injected the seven-time Cy Young award winner with steroids and human growth hormone, a charge Clemens has vehemently denied.
Even if the committee doesn’t make a recommendation, the Justice Department could act on its own.
“We don’t need to refer anything even if it’s apparent someone’s lying,” a committee staff member said Tuesday.
“Justice is watching and can make its own decisions,” said the staffer, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the hearing has not yet been held.
The FBI opened a preliminary investigation last month into whether former Orioles All-Star Miguel Tejada, now with the Houston Astros, lied in 2005 when he denied ever using steroids or knowing about other players who took the drugs.
The Tejada investigation is “still ongoing,” said Justice Department spokesman Paul Bresson. He declined to comment on whether the department was monitoring Clemens and McNamee.
“As a general rule, we don’t need a referral from the Hill to initiate an investigation, although that’s often how it works,” Bresson said.
Clemens and McNamee will testify in the same high-ceilinged, wood-paneled hearing room in which former Orioles star Rafael Palmeiro famously wagged his finger in March 2005 and said he never used steroids. He was suspended for 10 days after testing positive for a steroid in May of that year.
Committee staff members have more advance information about Wednesday’s witnesses than they did about Palmeiro, Mark McGwire and the other current and former players who testified in 2005.
That’s because the committee, employing a seldom-used legislative tool, summoned Clemens and McNamee for private question-and-answer sessions.
Such advance interviews are conducted in special investigations.
The depositions mean the committee already will be familiar with specific details of Clemens’ and McNamee’s accounts heading into the hearing. But Clemens won’t know what McNamee told the panel and vice-versa.
“I can tell you that I know for a fact that a lot of research has been done on this [hearing],” committee member Elijah Cummings, a Baltimore Democrat, said Tuesday. “This is a very, very, very serious matter. We’ve got the lives of some folks and their welfare involved here.”
Cummings called the hearing a “search for the truth. Will we come to some conclusions? I honestly don’t know. I think the hearing will be very interesting.”
He said the panel wouldn’t hesitate to recommend a perjury probe if it becomes evident either Clemens or McNamee were lying.
“I would think it would not take a very long time,” Cummings said.
McNamee told investigators for former Sen. George Mitchell last year that he repeatedly injected Clemens with steroids and human growth hormone between 1998 and 2001.
Last week, McNamee’s lawyers showed the committee photos of vials, gauze and a needle they allege were used to inject Clemens with steroids.
Clemens’ attorneys dismissed the material in the photos as “fabricated waste stuff” and called the trainer “a sad, tragic, obsessed man.”
Last month, Mitchell told the committee that he had faith in McNamee’s credibility.
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Pettitte’s testimony
Roger Clemens talked in 1999 or 2000 about using human growth hormone, his former New York Yankees teammate Andy Pettitte has told Congress in a sworn affidavit, The Associated Press learned Tuesday.
Pettitte revealed the conversation to the congressional committee holding Wednesday’s hearings on drug use in baseball, a person familiar with the affidavit says. The person spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity because the document has not been made public. The existence of the affidavit first was reported by The New York Times.
WATCH IT
Follow the congressional hearings on steroids live at 9 a.m. Wednesday on www.cspan.org.
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